


Written in Stone

by irrelevant



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-10
Updated: 2010-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pirate king's second?  The position's not all it's cracked up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Written in Stone

**Author's Note:**

> slight au written before the full backstory for these guys was published.

Roger never wrote anything down, not on paper. There was the occasional graffiti scrawled on or carved into thousand-year-old monuments (usually in Poneglyphic) but no records, no personal papers… just nothing. It drove Raleigh nuts. Roger's crew loved Roger, worshipped him; he was their leader, everyone's best friend, and the pirate king. No one wanted to dump their petty concerns in his lap and they didn't. That's what their first mate was for.

That Roger was a great man and a great captain, Raleigh would be first to agree. But after too many years of accountancy-via-mouth (this shopkeeper heard from his brother's wife's uncle-the-fisherman about a tavern-keep what got stiffed three islands back), incomplete manifests and nonexistent log entries, Raleigh was ready to dump the whole mess in the Oro Jackson's second mate's lap and spend a month facedown in a beer tankard. But then Crocus said he was done and so was Roger, and after that nothing—much less chicken-scratch on paper—mattered. Roger was dying, and Roger was dead on a Marine platform, and Roger was dead in _Loguetown_ of all damned cesspits!

Raleigh bore witness, yeah he did. He owed it to his captain. To his friend. He heard the words that lit the world on fire, saw Roger's smile flash one more time. Watched the blades fall. Then he took passage on the next ship leaving for the Grand Line, got stinking drunk and stayed that way for a month.

He found the letter a year later, just a few sentences unworthy of the name.

_Told you I wouldn't die. Believe me now? Bet I'll be back down there before you even get here, you stubborn bastard. Race you._

Raleigh looked at black lines bleeding into salt-wet and realized he was laughing.


End file.
